This month my team is working in Malaysia teaching English in the community that we are living. This isn’t the first month that I taught English. I spent the month in Costa doing actually a very similar thing. The biggest difference is here we are teaching Kindergarten instead of High School.
There are a few differences between Asia and Central America as well.
- It’s hot here.
It’s a comparable temperature to June or July in Tennessee. I knew when I signed up for the race that I had all hot countries so this didn’t come as a huge surprise and its something I was prepared for.
- They wear more clothes here.
Because the culture here is a lot more conservative the dress reflects that. We cover from our shoulders to our knees anytime we are working or just outside our house. This is something that took getting use to for me because in Central America or even at home the dress is not that strict. I can’t just wear my Nike shorts and a t shirt to go to the store. FYI jeans are hot. On another note, I actually really enjoy warm weather and I am enjoying not being cold here, so I will happily wear more clothes when I’m out in exchange for the warm weather.
- Christians are not the majority.
I am from the Bible belt, so the background that I had coming into the race was that Christians were everywhere around me and there was a church on every corner. Almost everyone you met claimed to be Christian or at least grew up in a family that claimed to be Christian. Latin America is a very similar culture. Almost everyone claims to be Catholic and has knowledge of God, and Christian values are openly discussed between people without fear of legal action. However it is not that way here in Malaysia. Here it is illegal to evangelize to the Malay Muslims. Islam is the major religion here, but Hinduism also has a big presence. There is even a Chinese temple not that far from my house where those that worship there pray to their ancestors. So the Christian population in few, and we have to be careful of what we say because any discussion of religion can be taken as trying to evangelize. We don’t teach any religion in the school because the majority of the kids are Muslim and we don’t openly evangelize. Once a week someone from our team does give a testimony at church, but that is the only teaching about Christianity that we are doing this month because of the strict laws on the matter.
